Hollywood superstar angelina jolie has arrived in Bangladesh as a special envoy of the UN refugee agency UNHCR. She has to assess the grim situation created by an unprecedented influx of thousands of Rohingya refugees in the country. She will have to work towards generating funds of nearly $1 billion to mitigate their sufferings. There are more than 720,000 of them and they have fled from neighboring Myanmar following a military clampdown there in August.

The Daily Mail UK reports this is Angelina Jolie’s first visit to Bangladesh, but she has had opportunities to meet Rohingya refugees on earlier occasions in Myanmar and in India.

She will now have to assess the humanitarian needs of nearly one million of them who occupy different camps in Bangladesh. There were 300,000 refugees already in the country before the exodus of 2017 and the addition of another 700,000 has strained its resources to the limit.

Jolie has her task cut out

The UN will be launching an international drive to generate funds required for taking care of the basic humanitarian needs related to health, education, housing etcetera for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Daily Mail UK says she will visit a number of refugee camps, and meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and other senior officials in Dhaka to discuss relevant issues. The UNHCR wants to extend assistance and augment the efforts of Bangladesh to tackle this crisis.

Angelina Jolie is a Hollywood superstar and in spite of her social activities in the role of a special envoy of UNHCR, she gets time to attend to her commitments for the screen.

Her last live-action movie was in 2015. It was “By the Sea” starring Brad Pitt. He was her husband at the time. Subsequently, she directed “First They Killed My Father” in 2017. There are indications that she could return to acting in 2020 with “Maleficent 2” – the sequel to the 2014 blockbuster “Maleficent.”

The Rohingya refugee crisis

In the opinion of UN investigators, the army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in the Buddhist dominated country of Myanmar is a sort of "ethnic cleansing." Bangladesh.is now home to hundreds of thousands of these people and the country faces problems related to meeting their humanitarian needs.

According to Sky News, Angelina Jolie will visit these unfortunate people and discuss with the authorities to assess the requirements of funds. This could add up to approximately $920m to help meet their basic needs. The Hollywood star is associated with UNHCR and will be here for three days.
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